


Lucid Dreaming

by NanakiBH



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It of Sorts, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, Melancholy, Post-Change of Heart!Shido, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 16:32:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14116416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NanakiBH/pseuds/NanakiBH
Summary: Leave this world better than the last.





	Lucid Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking about this idea ever since I wrote [Shipwreck.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12455972) I listened to [This Earth, For You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDV32AUXgsw) almost the whole time while I was writing this. You should listen to it. What a sad, beautiful song...

The world came to an end. All of the feelings that tore up his chest, they also came to an end.

Like a dying star, his anger exploded alone. His anguish bled out. In the blackness of space, he floated, the pieces of him separating farther and farther with time.

It seemed he was alone. In the end, no one was there to even receive his anger. With his eyes shut, he watched it drift around him. His fingers passed through everything he tried to touch, unable to even gather his own pieces. He didn't want them to leave him just yet. They couldn't go. His desperation grew despite everything.

Eventually, he became tired. He slipped into a black hole that swallowed him up. It took him far away to a place where everything was silent and still. In that place, he saw nothing, felt nothing, except, distantly, he heard someone's crying. Still, he felt nothing.

By the time he noticed himself again, he began to fear the absence of himself. Although he'd longed for a world without him, a world with nothing was much more frightening. He didn't want to be left there. If hate were to be his only emotion, then he wanted to hate brilliantly, enough to illuminate the world around him. It hurt, but it was something. Pain was more than nothing. It could keep him company...

His heart cried, but no sound of it made it to his ears.

It wasn't fair.

He wanted to see the way they changed the world. He was sure they did.

That one small change would have been enough to change his everything. It was kind of frightening. If he opened his eyes to find that his reason for being no longer existed, then his waking days would have been no different from aimlessly floating through space. He wasn't sure he would've believed it, though.

His anger wouldn't disappear that easily. He was going to tie a string around it to make sure.

Then, if anything happened to it...

He'd know it wasn't his fault.

 

So, one day, the feeling returned to his fingers.

Despair reached him much faster than the pain in his chest. Within that eternity, he hadn't had the time to decide what he was going to do. He'd watched the cold planet beneath him carry on without him and knew that it wouldn't have made a difference if he returned. He wasn't essential, but he was selfish.

If everything was going to carelessly move along, ignoring and forgetting his existence, then...

He didn't have to live for anyone else.

He didn't need anyone. If life had taught him anything, it was the predictable nature of human beings. There were no intangible things worth trying to grab. If he couldn't see someone's feelings, he didn't want them.

He was tired.

Taking one quivering breath, he was already tired.

He didn't have to live for anyone else. Even if it was exhausting. Whether the world had turned a new color or whether every person he'd ever hated had disappeared, he could carry on as himself, exactly as before. Nothing would hold him back.

And yet, he still reached out for his anger. He curled his fingers around the string that tethered them.

 

He opened his eyes.

 

His fist loosened, then tightened when the pain returned.

 

Searing.

 

The hand that touched his shoulder made him combust. All of the sound that had been trapped in the darkness inside of him seemed to burst out at that moment. Delusion and memories collided with reality in his head, exploding with a loud, blinding sound. Covering his ears, he yelled just to compete with the sound.

He thrust him away. Turned his angry eyes toward him.

The moment was plunged into a silence that commanded the previous seconds to forget themselves. His voice went back down and became trapped in his throat. He had words for the person next to him, and yet he couldn't recall them – not a single one. His vision just wavered like a mirage as he looked at him, mentally marking every subtle difference in his appearance.

 

“Goro...”

 

That was, his name...

 

Wasn't it?

 

He felt sick. Cold sweat gathered at the back of his neck, and he smiled. The pain he felt was extraordinary, but he smiled and a laugh slipped out from between his tightly-sealed lips.

“What are you doing here?” Akechi asked.

There was hesitation, though not the kind that was expected. While his eyes were closed, some time must have passed for such a drastic difference to have taken place. It couldn't have happened overnight. It couldn't have happened with the snap of their fingers.

He refused to believe it had been that easy for them to put such a shameful, guilty expression on his face. He looked so sad. It made Akechi wish he had the energy to strangle him. He didn't deserve to look so pitiable. It wasn't cute at all.

“I'm your father.”

Was that his reason?

“No, you aren't.”

That was just an excuse.

“Goro...”

“Don't say my name.” Even when he laid on his back, the pain in his chest went straight through him. It seemed there was no way for him to become comfortable. He had no choice but to lay there and suffer Shido's attention. It was strange. He didn't want it. For some reason, that was strange.

 

He didn't want to be looked at.

 

“You could've died.”

“Yeah.”

Shido removed his glasses. He put them in his lap and rubbed his eyes. The way he sighed... It was so irritating. It sounded like he was trying to hold something back. The way he squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head aside with a pained expression, too...

Akechi closed his eyes.

“I don't know what to say... I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Goro.”

Those weren't the words he wanted him to say, but Akechi knew he wouldn't have been able to think of a more suitable place for him to begin. Even if he would've never granted it, he wanted to hear him beg for his forgiveness. For everything.

“I don't feel bad for you,” he said, opening his eyes only to stare at the wall in front of him. “Don't get the wrong impression. This act doesn't impress me one bit. I'm not going to fall for it if you just apologize and cry a little. It's going to take more than that to move me.”

From the corners of his eyes, he saw him nod, heard him suck in another breath that was meant to hold that something down. He seemed to contemplate the glasses in his lap, but he left them there and pressed his fingers back to his eyes. It was unsettling and upsetting to see him acting emotional. Akechi couldn't stand to watch.

His remorseful face disgusted him, so he was loath to admit how natural it felt. In order to hate him completely, he had to ensure that Shido became the most unforgivable, atrocious human being, so he'd personally watched his Palace grow. 'The bigger they are, the harder they fall,' he thought...

Shido's fall was supposed to be as spectacular as his hate.

So was that the punishment for his hubris...?

He hadn't been able to experience that moment. He may as well have been dead. Who was he if not the one who personally brought about the rise and fall of Shido Masayoshi? What was the point of him, then? He was a disappointment even to himself.

 

“Thank you.”

 

At those words, Akechi relented, turning to look at him. Even moving that much seemed to put stress on his body, causing pain to stab him in the chest. He put a hand over it, but he couldn't tell where the wound was. The pain seemed to run dangerously close to his heart.

“I didn't expect you to give me the opportunity to speak to you,” Shido said.

“You don't deserve it.”

“I know.” His voice was quieter and softer than Akechi had ever heard. “I know that now.”

“So? What do you want from me? If you're like this... You're finished, aren't you?”

“I am. I'm finished.” Finally, he put his glasses back on. He sat back in the chair at the bedside, but he didn't look comfortable. A frown persisted. “I wanted to be here, to be sure that you were okay. If anything happened to you-... I don't know what happened in my Palace, but I'm sure it would have been my fault.” He stared at his hands. His voice sounded damp. “I know it must be difficult for you to believe any word that comes out of my mouth, but that's the truth. I won't say more. How I feel is irrelevant.”

“No... No, it's not.”

It should've been, but. There were things Akechi wanted to know. It hurt more to imagine that he'd been hurt for no reason. Even though that was who Shido was supposed to be – someone entirely selfish and inconsiderate – Akechi still wanted to understand. Somehow, a passionate act of hate sounded more acceptable than pure indifference.

He still deeply resented the eyes that had looked right through him.

But it looked like they were already gone.

 

Again, his grasp began to slip.

 

Shido, he just looked at him.

 

The sincerity of his silence was worth more than words. It really hurt. Akechi really hated it.

Really.

Where had it been before?

 

“You called yourself my father...”

As if he could be. He hadn't been. For as long as he'd known him, he was just 'Shido-san', just some cruel stranger. The person Akechi was angry at was his father, yet he could never truly call him that from his heart, understanding that Shido needed to understand what it meant to be his father in order to even understand his anger. That was why he couldn't simply vent his feelings. He had to design a scenario that would form an equivalence. If Shido lost something he valued to his son's hands, then, that way, he would've had no choice but to understand.

And... then...?

Then, his chest ached. And, that seemed to be the way things were supposed to be. It just naturally followed, even though he hadn't given it thought before. He hadn't wanted to. He never wanted to reach that point, even if it was inevitable.

Why did it have to be inevitable?

He wanted to close his eyes and go back to recall the hate he was already forgetting. A feeling like elation was uncontrollably taking a hold of him, seizing his heart, filling it with relief.

If he had to choose between forgetting what it meant to hate or losing himself completely, he wasn't sure how he could choose. The two choices sounded identical.

 

A world without Akechi Goro...

 

“You made me a liar,” he said quietly. He shifted, trying to get onto his side to bring himself closer to him, but moving was a lot more difficult than he expected. It felt like he was being stabbed from the inside by the raw edges of his own broken bones. “I feel terrible. Feels like... It feels like I'm dying. So. Before I die... Let me tell you the truth.”

Back straight, Shido nodded, giving him his attention.

Akechi sucked in a breath and commanded himself to speak. It wasn't often he had his attention that way.

“I hate you. I really... More than anyone...” A distressing amount of pain overwhelmed him and his eyes squeezed shut on their own as a groan involuntarily escaped. Clutching a quivering hand to his chest, he looked up and tried to hold his gaze against Shido's. He tried to keep the fire burning, but it wavered along with his vision. “Don't you... dare forget it...”

That was the absolute truth of a liar.

Saying it out loud, to his face, it wasn't that bad. It still felt pretty good. The fact that he'd been able to say that much lifted a certain weight off his chest and made it a little easier to breathe.

As his body began to slump forward, that hand returned, catching him by the shoulder. Akechi didn't have the strength to push it away that time. Its sheer strength surmounted all other feeling. It would have been an exaggeration to say that it stole away the pain, but it was strong and sure and it drew his attention away from everything else, forcing him to focus on just those five fingers. Although he couldn't bring himself to reconnect their eyes, he had a feeling he knew what sort of expression he would have seen on Shido's face based on the tightness of his grasp.

Shido couldn't say what he really wanted anymore, even if he tried. The proud man who once had anything and everything he wanted could only wait to be given scraps.

 

Lucky for him, Akechi was already in tatters.

 

“They said you're going to be okay. Don't worry.”

“Yeah right...” He didn't feel like he was going to be okay. Hearing someone like Shido tell him 'don't worry' just filled him with more worry.

His body shook as he was laid down on his back. Apprehensively, he looked down and opened his fist. Unsurprisingly, there was nothing in his hand. Whatever he thought he'd been holding onto didn't seem to exist. It might have, once. But that felt besides the point.

 

His hands were free.

 

“I'm not going to leave you. Things are bad right now, but I'm going to visit as often as I can. I promise, I'm not going to abandon you.”

“You always did know what I wanted to hear,” Akechi said, giving him a sardonic smile.

“You were out for a long time. It's almost Christmas,” Shido said. “Is there anything you'd like?”

He used to live in a world where revenge felt like the only thing worth pursuing. Wishing for more would have been like wishing for the world to stop and begin spinning in the other direction, and yet... He already acknowledged that his world belonged in past tense. His anger and the corpse of his past self were left behind there.

 

There was something he wanted, and, because he didn't have to hold onto anything anymore, he could reach for it.

 

He couldn't move, but it was okay. Shido seemed happy to come to him.

He hadn't been held by anyone since his mother died. It seemed like some kind of insult to her memory to let Shido be that close, but the person who was holding him didn't line up with the person in his memory. The way he held him was nothing like the way she used to hold him, either. Shido's arms were big. His embrace was almost painful. He was clumsy, like he had no idea what he was doing. Even though it was just a hug.

“What do you want from me?” he asked again.

Shido pulled away. He looked at him, remaining close with his hands on his shoulders. “I'm not going to give you orders anymore if that's what you're asking.”

He didn't have to live for anyone else anymore, but how was he supposed to do that if he didn't know how to live for himself? Apart from revenge, he had no ambition. He didn't care about the future at all, nor did he care about himself or anyone else. It was just Shido. Because of him. For him.

Shido had to know that. He had to realize that he was his responsibility.

He was at the end of his rope, too frustrated and exhausted to put on a strong, mature face. Doing so took too much out of him. That mask had worn him.

“Please,” he said quietly, ashamed. “I don't have anything. The least you could do now is tell me what I should do,” he said. That was his permission. If so much had changed, he wanted to know what his new orders would be.

“You don't have to do anything. I already said I won't abandon you now.”

He reached out, placing a hand against Akechi's cheek with apprehension in his eyes. He seemed to understand how presumptuous he was being, boldly touching him that way. He knew that it was the right thing to do. And he knew what to say.

“Be my son.”

To hear those words, Akechi thought he had to have died – or he was dreaming. It probably wasn't meant to be an order, but he decided to commit to it like one. Everything was always easier that way, when he told himself that he was just doing what Shido wanted.

Shido moved his hand to his forehead, pushed his hair back to look at his face.

Akechi smiled weakly, tears forming in his eyes.

“I really wanted... to crush you myself...”

“I think you did alright,” Shido said.

The smile on Akechi's face grew wider, beginning to feel more and more pleased with the difference. “I don't feel like I lost... Serves you right.”

He won on a technicality. The Thieves carried out his request and did what he couldn't. Had it been up to him, things probably would have gone very differently. One of them would've been dead, and he had a feeling it wouldn't have been Shido; for as deeply as his hatred ran, it failed to reach the deepest part of his heart where the last of his hope remained. That hope was always holding on for a miracle – a change of heart.

If he wanted to cry, it was okay to cry, right? He could think about the consequences later. As long as he didn't think about whether it was right or wrong, he could let himself indulge in a moment of relief, letting himself be held, letting himself shed the kind of tears he'd long held back. His tears for his mother had already dried up, so he cried for himself – for his lost childhood and the shame he felt for wanting to be loved by the same man who had treated him so coldly.

 

“My son...”

 

That man wasn't cold anymore.

 

“Papa...”

 

He was just testing it on his tongue. It was amazing how one word could leave him feeling so disarmed and helpless. The fear he expected it to cause was there, but he also realized that it wasn't necessary. He wanted to remain obstinate, but his reluctance was rapidly melting away, exposing his heart.

All the while, tears rolled down his face with barely a sound. His body trembled. In the end, he moved himself with his own feelings. Holding on was too difficult. Dying would have been easier than believing in every lie he ever told himself.

It probably would have been wrong by anyone else's measure, but Shido was different; the world had fundamentally shifted. Even if he hadn't received his own change of heart, the difference in Shido made him also feel like someone else. The frustration and longing and desperation that had been kept inside of him readily came pouring out.

His hands laying against Shido's back, he stared at the ceiling, at the evening hues cast from the window's light, and released a long, exhausted breath. His mind quieted down.

“Please, take care of me.”

As Shido pulled away, before he could leave completely, Akechi took his hands and held them. His puzzled face was very satisfying, enough to make Akechi smile. Appearing to be at something of a loss, Shido's body stayed stiff as he processed the contact.

Akechi let him go, smiling still. “You don't know what a feeling is, do you?”

He looked so troubled. “I hope you understand – I don't like feeling embarrassed.”

 

His feelings made him embarrassed...?

 

“Ah... I can die happy. My revenge is complete. I've humiliated Shido Masayoshi by making him feel a feeling.”

“S-... Stop that...”

In the blink of an eye, Akechi returned to being serious. Although his eyelids were beginning to feel heavy, he narrowed his eyes and stared at him. “I'm going to make you pay, you know.”

Shido nodded solemnly. “You can do whatever you wish with me. In return, I'll take care of you.”

Those terms weren't equal at all, and he appeared to be painfully aware of that. Perhaps more painful was knowing that neither of them would be capable of going back to the way they'd been. Even that made Akechi feel a little resentful, but he was too tired to dwell on it. He was content to enjoy what was in front of him without contemplating whether it was alright to even feel so content. He just wanted to be.

“I'll go call the nurse to let them know you're awake. Don't move.”

He became more tired as he watched Shido walk away.

Even if that moment happened to be nothing more than the delirious dream of a dying boy, then he was still grateful. The strange warmth in his chest was real enough for him.

He felt reluctant to let his eyes close completely. If they opened again, he hoped he'd find out how that world continued.


End file.
